the hat man helping the cat
by KaeterinaRomanov
Summary: Neal comes home to find Katarina in his house. Kat is in trouble, alone, and she needs help. Neal, an old associate of her dad, was the last person she could turn to. turns out Tuccone is back and he is roping Kat into helping him once again.


**I own nothing! I wish I did, but alas I do not. **** Hope you enjoy chapter one to my new story! ****PLEASE REVIEW!**

**Neal's POV**

I was walking towards the small café that my friend Bobby wanted to meet up at when I felt somebody grab my hand. Surprised I looked to see who it was, to my surprise I had to look down, way down to see who had grabbed my hand. It was a little girl with short dark brown hair. Her eyes a bright blue and she was looking right up at me.

"Are you Neal?" the little girl asked.

"What would make you say that?" I asked her, who was this little girl and how did she know my name?

"My daddy said to go look for a guy in an expensive suit and a hat, you were the first one that I saw." She told me with a very serious but still childish look.

"Who is your daddy?" I asked.

"My daddy said to find you then take you to the real meeting place because the real one is not good anymore." She started pulling me along, well more like I let her pull me along. Was her dad Bobby? I didn't know Bobby had any children. The little girl pulled me past the café we were supposed to meet at and kept walking. After about five minutes we got to a nice little park that had many vending booths in it. The little girl stopped then started looking around, after a bit she started jumping up and down for some reason. Finally she gave a little huff and turned to me "Do you see any balloons? Daddy said that he was going to be by the balloons, but I can't see over all of the tall people."

I laughed to myself but humored her and looked for balloons until I saw them. Now it was my turn to pull her along, which she happily let me. I looked down again at the girl, she was skipping next to me with a big smile on her face. She was all too trusting I thought to myself. When we finally got to the balloons I saw Bobby sitting on a bench, the little hand left mine and she ran to Bobby. Bobby laughed and picked her up, she sat happily on his lap. "Does this mean I get ice cream?!" She asked excitedly.

"Yes you will get ice cream, just as soon as Neal and I are done talking." Bobby told her. Her smile got even bigger and she fell quiet her legs swinging in delight.

"I didn't know you had a kid." I told Bobby.

Bobby looked at me and smiled "Yeah this here is Katarina and she just turned six a couple of weeks ago." Katarina smiled up at me "Yeah I got lots of presents from everybody!" she told me with a happy look on her face.

"Six and she is already conning?" I asked him.

"Never too young to start I guess, honestly she started two years ago." Bobby told me. Bobby and me talked for a few minutes while he told me what he wanted me to do. The whole time I saw Katarina staring at me, well at my hat. As I was about to leave I sighed to myself. I knew this child for less than a half an hour and she already stole my heart. I took my hat off of my head and put it on hers. It was obviously way too big for her and it fell down over her eyes. She reached up and readjusted it and smiled at me, then gave me a questioning look.

"That is for your birthday, sorry I missed it." I told her with a smirk. She gave me a big smile, jumped off of Bobby's lap and gave my leg a big hug.

"Thank you Neal!" She giggled at me when the hat fell over her eyes again.

I walked away waving at the cute little six year old and her father.

~~~~~~~~~ Time skip to after Peter Caught Neal ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter for some reason was coming over to my place to talk. Honestly I just don't think that he wanted to talk in front of El. We got to my door when both of us stopped. One of my hats was hanging on my door knob. "Why is that…?" Peter started asking, but I interrupted him "I have no idea."

I opened the door to see Mozzie sitting at the kitchen table and I heard my shower going. "Mozzie what in the world is going on?"

Mozzie looked up and gave me a knowing smile "Oh a little Kat decided to come visit."

I instantly knew who it was, I had run into Kat a couple of more times throughout the years and each time we had a blast. But I hadn't seen Kat since before Peter had arrested me. Suddenly I heard the shower shut off and a couple of minutes later Kat came out dressed, thankfully, with her hair in a towel. "Oh hey Neal, you're back good." She looked at Peter and instantly registered that he was a cop so decided to shorten her reason for while she was here "Neal I need your help, I've gotten myself into a bit of trouble." She took her hair out of the towel walked past us and put the hat that was still on the door knob onto her head, tilting it just a bit. "Don't want to lose by birthday present now do I?" she asked me.

I laughed "You still have that old hat?" I asked her laughing some more before continuing "I gave that to you when you were like six."

"And it is still my favorite hat." She told me with a grin, but then got serious again. "But seriously Neal, I do really need help."

"Why come to me?" I asked her.

"Well Hale is being moody right now, Gabrielle is at her mother's wedding again, Angus and Hamish are in Paraguay or was it Uruguay?, well anyway Uncle Eddie is off somewhere, Simon is at a tech convention and since I took him out of the last one he was at I would feel bad to take him out again. You don't know Nick, but he is with his mom and that is a whole different story. And dad is being watched in Rome. I didn't really have anyone else to come to." Kat told me.

"What about the rest of your family?"

"Oh they are all, on vacation and getting souvenirs." She told me with a smirk. Ah so that meant they were all off stealing something in some far off place and she couldn't get ahold of them.

"Wow you really are on your own aren't you?" I told her with a laugh.

"Shut it Neal, so not in the mood." She told me with a glare.

"Last I saw you didn't you say you were getting out of your family business?" I asked her.

"Yeah that lasted like no time at all, Hale got me expelled. Then the reason why I need help started there. There is a long gap in between then and now, but it really starts there."

I turned to Peter and got serious "Peter I am going to give you two options; one give everybody in the room full immunity like you did for me, or leave. I'm not going to betray Kat, and I don't want to get her in trouble."

Peter seemed to think it over for a bit, obviously underestimating how much an 18 year old could do that would need immunity and with him being a sucker for damsels in distress helped him make up his mind "As long as nobody killed anybody, I can give immunity for your story."

Kat smiled at me "Well look at you Neal, you actually found a nice cop. I didn't think that those existed anymore, congrats!"

"Shut up Kat. Now tell me what happened after Hale got you kicked out of your nice little private school."

"Well I get blamed for taking the president's car and making it part of the front fountain display. Obviously that had been Hale. Well with that I got sucked right back into the family business."

Peter interrupted her "What is your family business exactly?"

She smiled at Peter, but I also caught the questioning look she sent me. I gave her the go ahead "Well Peter, my family is all thieves."

Peter's eyes got wide and both me and Kat burst out laughing. Mozzie was chuckling softly in the background "You're a thief?"

"Well more like a Kat burglar." She said with a snicker, then turned serious "Well these days I'm more like a modern day robin hood. I steal things that don't belong to people and give them back to their rightful owners.

"Anyway back to the story. I found out that my dad got in a tight spot in Paris and was being watched by Interpol. That was when he came into the picture." She paused actually looking a bit frightened.

"Who Kat? Who is he?" I asked her.

She looked at me with sad eyes "Neal have you ever heard of Arturo Tuccone?"

Neal's eyes opened wide I looked to Peter and he had a grim look on his face, obviously he knew about him too.

"From your expressions I'm going to say yes. Well he had gotten stolen from, at first I thought that dad was just on the list, but then we realized that dad was the list. Somebody used one of dad's old tricks and Tuccone was not happy. So with dad being watched by Interpol he told me I was going to have to get the paintings back. So I recruited Hale, Gabs, Simon, The Bagshaws, and later on Nick. To answer your question Nick is somebody who pickpocketed from the wrong person, or so I thought at the time. Truth was we found out that Nick's mom was the head Interpol investigator investigating my dad. Tuccone threatened everybody, especially my dad. So I did the one thing that the whole family frowns upon, I went to Interpol and became a witness saying I saw my dad rob the place.

"We found out the worst news, the painting had been stolen by Visily Romani and he had put the paintings behind other paintings in … the Henley." She stopped to gage our reactions, even Mozzie was paying attention, ever since she mentioned Tuccone. Now that she mentioned the Henley even Mozzie was shocked. She gave us a small smile "Yeah we found we had to rob the Henley and at this point we had less than two weeks. I'm not going to get into the details on how we did it, but let me tell you it wasn't easy. When we finally got the painting from behind the other ones, we found out that one was missing, but I had already come up with an idea so I wasn't too worried. I then went back to Paris and waited for Tuccone to show up. He always knew where I was, he had me watched constantly. Sure enough he showed up, I told him they were in the building right across the street. He smiled, thanked me, sort of threatened me, and then left to go get his paintings. The painting were in there, but so was the artwork that my dad had stolen. With a victory smile I called Interpol and Tuccone was arrested. I thought everything was over with."

This time Mozzie interrupted her "Kat I am dying to know, I heard whispers and rumors, but never anything conclusive. Did you steal the Cleopatra Emerald?" Mozzie asked her in anticipation.

Kat smiled at him "Gabs hated that thing, it cursed her. She was so mad at that thing, she tripped, lost her balance, and was basically the exact opposite of what Gabs really was. It is now where it is supposed to be."

Peter spoke up again "So let me get this straight _**You**_ were the one who robbed the Henley _**and**_ the one to steal the Cleopatra Emerald?"

"Yes I was, well me and by crew. Thanks for the immunity by the way." She smiled her disarming smile at Peter and I could tell that he felt stupid.

I figured it was time to get to why she was here "So Kat why are you here?"

Kat lost her smile immediately and everyone saw it "Last week Tuccone got out of prison, and a day after that I got a not in the mail. He says that he is in need of something that only I can get or else. He didn't really need to say what the or else was, most likely the same as last time. So Neal I need you to help me, not physically just planning, but I need you to help me get …"

**Sorry cliffhanger! So what do you think that Tuccone would want Kat to steal? Please Review!**


End file.
